1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to the production of natural flavorants and their incorporation into food products to impart or augment a certain flavor. Specifically the process involves the production of a natural flavor essence derived from strawberry plant material which will impart to a food product, a fresh green fruity flavor and/or enhance the fresh flavor impact of the food product.
2. Background Art
The food art has recently strived to produce natural flavors to be incorporated into food products. Consumers have become wary of the presence of artificial ingredients thereby increasing the need for the production of natural flavorants. Cis-3-hexenol, also known as leaf alcohol, is an important ingredient in formulating a fresh strawberry flavor. Leaf alcohol and leaf aldehyde (also known as trans-2-hexenal) are known to be present in fresh leaves, vegetables and fruits. J. Sekiya, et al in an article entitled Biosynthesis of Leaf Alcohol Formation of 3Z-Hexenal from Linolenic Acid in Chloroplasts of Thea sinensis Leaves teaches the importance of cis-3-hexenal as the precursor of leaf alcohol. Linolenic acid in the presence of oxygen is metabolized to cis-3-hexenal which is easily isomerized to leaf aldehyde. In this particular work carried out on fresh tea leaves, the enzyme system responsible for the breakdown of linolenic acid was reported to be present within the plant chloroplasts. In a review article entitled Biosynthesis of Leaf Alcohol by A. Hatanaka the biosynthetic pathway leading to the production of leaf alcohol was discussed. Linolenic acid was added to a blend of summer tea leaves and trans-2-hexenal and cis-3-hexenol were produced. The author states that approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of the linolenic acid was converted to trans-2-hexenal and cis-3-hexenol. In this particular experiment, cis-3-hexenal, which the author teaches to be a labile compound, was not detected allegedly because of isomerization to trans-2-hexenal. Additional experiments on the pathway of C.sub.6 -aldehydes led to the discovery that when linolenic acid was incubated with tea chloroplasts, cis-3-hexenal and trans-2-hexenal were produced and confirmed by chromatography. The enzyme activities were higher in the chloroplasts harvested during the summer and were lower for those harvested in the winter. Strawberry leaves were identified as Possessing an enzyme system containing high degree of activity for producing C.sub.6 -aldehydes. Similarly J. Sekiya et al. in an article entitled Seasonal Changes In Activities Of Enzymes Responsible For The Formation Of C.sub.6 -aldehydes and C.sub.6 -alcohols in Tea Leaves, and the Effects of Environmental Temperatures on the Enzyme Activities discusses the formation of volatile C.sub.6 -compounds such as hexanal, cis-3-hexenal, cis-3-hexenol and trans-2-hexenal being derived from linolenic or linoleic acids when combined with a homogenate of tea leaves.
While the art describes the production of leaf alcohol and leaf aldehyde, there is a need to describe a process for producing and recovering a natural flavorant, green leaf essence, containing leaf aldehyde, leaf alcohol and cis-3-hexenal in a partially purified form for incorporation as a flavor essence into foodstufs.